When using the Internet, network latency and distance to server may be important. A request for data typically means a roundtrip to the server, which takes time and increases latency. Such latency tends to lead to poor user experience, especially when streaming an application, where the user may notice delays in loading executable data.
One way to reduce the latency is to move the data closer to the end user. Web sites are known to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to do this. In the current state of the art, however, an independent software vendor (ISV) desiring to stream an application over the internet typically cannot use a CDN because CDN's distribute only static data using a standard protocol like HTTP. Further, CDNs do not service custom services on their servers.
Accordingly, an ISV desiring to stream an application over the internet typically needs to deploy a custom set of servers, running a custom network protocol, and to manage them in a data center. This limits the ISV's ability to scale. For example, they might need to build a large number of datacenters in order to replicate what a CDN could provide if they could stream via HTTP.